


Low-Pressure System

by LovelyPoet



Category: Bates Motel (2013)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-10-08
Updated: 2014-10-08
Packaged: 2018-02-20 10:36:55
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,312
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2425616
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LovelyPoet/pseuds/LovelyPoet
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Even if it’s just for a little while, she can pretend that this is all there is.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Low-Pressure System

**Author's Note:**

  * For [lorilann](https://archiveofourown.org/users/lorilann/gifts).



In Gunner’s motel room, with the curtains drawn to block out the mid-day sun, Emma feels like she’s stepped into the eye of a storm.  When he kisses her, pulls her down into the bed and helps her out of her clothes, everything feels lighter. Even if it’s just for a little while, she can pretend that this is all there is.

“You could come with me,” Gunner says later, when Emma comes out of his bathroom. The heat of the shower has left her skin pink, and the motel towel is small and feels rough against her as she rubs dry.

“What, dropout of high school and run away with you?” Emma asks, looking at the long sprawl of Gunner in the bed. He’s naked still, the blankets kicked onto the floor and sheet tangled around his hips. There’s a bite mark on his chest darkening to a bruise, and Emma flushes with an odd sort of pride. “Join the pot harvest circuit? How’s the insurance plan?”

“I guess we’ll just have to wait until I get my own operation going, then,” he says. Emma turns the knob on her oxygen tank, restarting the flow, fits the cannula against her nostrils and lies down next to him. Gunner lifts her hair, helps her arrange the tubing over her ears. “I’ll settle down eventually. Maybe Colorado. Be an upstanding businessman and get you all the cupcakes you can eat.”

“You leave in a week and a half?” she asks. Gunner mumbles an affirmative against her shoulder, his fingers sliding light and ticklish against her belly, between her legs until she’s gasping and breathless in the best way she’s ever known.

*

Norman is barely talking to her. As far as Emma can tell, Norman isn’t talking to anyone else either. She sees him at school sometimes, moving through the halls like a shadow. She almost never sees him at the motel, and when she does he just asks if she’s told anyone about what he told her about his mother, about Dylan.

She hasn’t.

Dylan is at the house more often now. He’s quieter, too, more serious, and she can’t help but notice the lump of a gun under his jacket all the time now. And she’s seen him talking to Romero in the office one minute and Gunner and the others down in the parking lot the next. When he says hello to her, she nods and clenches her jaw, biting back the urge to murmur sympathy for things she isn’t allowed to talk about.

The weight of secrets makes the air feel thick, and Emma can tell there’s still so much she doesn’t know. Can see it in the way Norma flinches every time the phone rings, how conversations still end quickly when she enters a room. Before, she thought that not being told the truth was going to drive her mad, but now she’s not sure she could stand to know any more.

“Oh, I’m so glad you didn’t quit,” Norma says, almost every day. She’s taken to dragging Emma into tight, suffocating hugs in greeting. When she draws back, she rests a hand carefully against Emma’s cheek, her mouth pulled into a false smile. “I just don’t think I’d be able to manage without you.”

“Is Norman okay?” Emma asks, listening to the creak of footsteps through the office ceiling. “Are you?”

“Of course,” Norma says with brassy, grating cheer. “Everything’s just fine. We all have our rough patches, but it’s all right now. Don’t you worry about a thing. How are things going with that boy? Is he being good to you?”

“He’s great,” Emma says, feeling her face go hot. "Really. I kind of like him a lot."

Good. That's good," Norma nods. "I'm glad. You deserve a nice boy."

*

School feels different since Bradley. Everyone turned her memorial into just an excuse to drink and smoke and hook-up, but Emma notices the way things have changed. No one moves into Bradley’s seat in history, and in the cafeteria her friends have all scattered to other tables, leaving an empty space right in the center of the room.

Emma touches her locker every time she walks by, just lets her fingers drift over the metal.

“You weren’t even friends,” Norman says, and Emma didn’t even notice him stopping beside her. It's not the first time Norman has reminded her of it.

“Yeah, well. She’s still dead, and it’s weird.” Emma shrugs, shoving her hands in her pockets. She’s not sure how to explain. Miss Watson was a shock, but she was a teacher, someone with her own life and secrets (and god, does everybody in White Pine Bay except her have the kind of secrets that can get you killed?) But Bradley’s left this scar, a visible hole that isn’t filling in. Emma can’t help but wonder if it would be the same for her, or does death only leave a mark when it’s unexpected. Would people cry for her, or would they all just say ‘it’s about time’ and go on with their day?

*

“I don’t like Mrs. Bates keeping you at work so late on school nights,” her dad says when Emma comes in at eleven. Her shift ended at six. “You have homework to be thinking about, and you need your sleep.”

“It’s just a few more days. It’s just been really busy.” The house is dark except for his reading lamp, his finger marking the place in his book. "I did my homework on my break."

(Her homework is done, so it's only sort of a lie.)

“Hmmm,” he frowns. “I just worry.”

“I’m being careful.” she says, hanging up her coat and switching over from portable tank to compressor, the whir of it’s motor filling the empty spaces in the room.  “Plenty of rest, taking all my medication. Nothing’s changed.”

“I didn’t say I don’t trust you,” he says. “I know you're a smart girl. You can take care of yourself, always have. But I’m always going to worry. I'm your dad; it’s my job.”

“Aww, thanks Dad,” Emma smiles.

“It just gets a bit quiet around here now that you’re off being social and having a job.” He says, through a yawn. “I think I need a new hobby. Something with people."

"What, the dead animals not holding up their end of the conversations?” Emma says, flopping down on the couch.

"Maybe I’ll start bowling. Heads up," he says and tosses her the remote control. Emma hits power, flips through the channels until she lands on something that looks sufficiently brainless.

“Don't get too excited. I'll be in your hair again soon," she promises. "Like I said, just a few more days before the lull hits and everything goes back to normal.”

"We'll see. Don't stay up too late." He stands, stretching out his back, ruffles Emma's hair as he heads toward the stairs.

*

They don’t spend their last day together at the motel. She would have welcomed one last chance to hide away in the haze of bare skin and blankets but, when she knocks, Gunner doesn’t pull her into the room. Instead, he takes her to the movies, and his fingers are smeared with salt and butter when his hand wraps around hers. He buys her a milkshake and burger after.

“You be careful,” Emma tells him in the parking lot, his friends hooting and laughing from the open door of the van. It’s just starting to rain, chill and damp seeping into her down to the bone.

“I’ll see you next year,” he says, kissing her so sweet and sincere that it makes Emma’s stomach twist with missing him already.

In her room later, she lies awake and listens to the wind howling through the trees and rain pounding against the roof, wonders how long it will last. 


End file.
